Episode 111: Les Nuits // Elian - Episode 121

2021 has had a rough start, but overall, I think everyone is looking optimistically to the future. Now that the vaccine has been approved, it's just a matter of time before enough people are vaccinated, and the world finally moves on. Whether it takes a year or two is a matter of semantics. One thing is for sure: the end of the madness is within striking distance.

Our hearts go out to those how lost loved ones and to those who lost businesses or jobs due to the pandemic. However, there has got to be some silver linings we can identify and even celebrate. For example, every one of us has learned some new coping mechanisms that we can now add to our toolbox of resilience. We have learned to get work done easier, or to no longer need to go to the office anymore. For millions, the hours wasted every day have just become a thing of the past. It seemed impossible for so many years to avoid sitting in traffic daily for an extended period of time. It seemed inevitable, something we'd need to learn to deal with and accept for the rest of our lives. Yet, in some of the most populous cities in the world, the bi-product of this exercise of lockdowns has turned out to be the eradication of traffic problems that are so bad, that they used to plague their populations and render their lives discouragingly frustrating.

And without much fanfare, a major leap for mankind has taken place. The phenomenon may not be discussed very much to speak of in the media, yet it is one that is not lost on the residents of major cities from Sao Paolo, and L.A. to Johannesburg, Jakarta and Manila: traffic problems have been virtually solved. And this all happened with little to no capital spent on infrastructure.

The big lesson here is that many of our society's most seemingly insurmountable problems can be solvable if we were to simply reorganise our priorities and think outside the box.

And even though we are still at the dawn of the digital age, where every action is becoming recorded and remembered, there are nevertheless major breakthroughs for the specie happening at an unprecedented pace. The fact that pretty much everyone can talk to each other, that everyone can find pretty much any business they are searching for, the fact that every person can find any destination effortlessly, the fact that any product can be sold to anyone, without the need for the seller to rent a store, the fact that you never have to leave your house anymore to eat any food out there on the menu of just about any restaurant, the fact that you can now meet with anybody without driving to see them... many of these new realities have become fully adopted in the last year.

We are still waiting to find out how the music industry is going to adjust to the situation. But we are sure that what's on the other side will be better in some ways than what we had before the pandemic. Let's take the radio show broadcasted on the internet by NPR called Tiny Desk Concerts. In the past, the artist had to fly to DC and record their appearance inside NPR's offices, behind the tiny desk. What they've learned to do during the pandemic is that in it no longer necessary for the band and their crew to fly to DC. The performance can be filmed anywhere and submitted to NPR digitally, thus exponentially expanding the possibilities of artists that could appear on the award-winning music show.

Soon we will find a digital substitute for the live performance, one that I am sure will be somehow "better", both for the audience and for the artist, because it will give the artist unprecedented access to their fans. True, the jazz artist may no longer have a room of 30 fans to play to, but they may instead have a virtual room of 3000 listeners.

In the meantime, we invite you to enjoy this 2 1/2-hour set of uninterrupted music from the Music & Wine vault. For now, we'll just keep bringing you music to get your juices flowing ;)

Peace & love,

Elian & Inés